White phosphorous munitions are destroyed in the southern Gaza Strip during a controlled demolition in March 2010. There are concerns that such Israeli weaponry has contributed to a spike in cancer rates in the territory.

Jihad is a boy with ambitions. “I want to grow until I become an astronaut and an engineer,” the 9-year-old said. “At the same time.”

Before he could achieve those goals, Jihad would have to recover from a major illness. About a year ago, he was diagnosed with cancer of the colon.

The diagnosis was made after he had been taken to hospital with food poisoning.

For his family, the news was the latest in a series of tragedies. Jihad’s twin brother was born with severe disabilities and died after just two months.

“I was so happy when the doctor told me I was pregnant with twin boys,” Jihad’s mother, Majda Ali, said. “I started to dream about how I would be mother to a doctor and an engineer. The dream has been destroyed.”

Majda does not know the cause of Jihad’s cancer. She fears, however, that it may have something to do with how she was exposed to a considerable amount of dust from buildings bombed by Israel during Operation Cast Lead, the attack on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

What she does know is that Jihad requires urgent treatment. He has been referred to specialists working in Jerusalem. It is not clear when – or even if – Israel will allow him to travel.

Rates of cancer are rising in Gaza. Health ministry officials have estimated[PDF] that there were 105 cases of cancer for every 100,000 residents in Gaza for 1998-2008. For 2009-2014, that had increased to 141 cases per 100,000 residents, 41 percent more than in the previous period.

Cancer rates are increasing worldwide, particularly in developing countries, due to an increase in risk factors like smoking, adoption of Western diets and sedentary lifestyles, as well as environmental pressures.

But in Gaza, there are particular concerns that Israeli weaponry may be a contributing factor.

Obstruction

Israel is known to have experimented with a number of weapons during the 2008 offensive. They included a US-supplied “bunker buster” missile called GBU-39 and white phosphorous, a weapon that causes severe burns.

Suspicions have been raised that some of the missiles used by Israel were coated with depleted uranium, a radioactive substance.

Khaled Thabet, head of the oncology department at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, has said that Israel’s use of depleted uranium may be linked to increased levels of cancer.

It has been reported, too, that Israel has been spraying pesticides on farms in Gaza for a number of years. The use of toxic pesticides and fertilizers by farmers may also be contributing to the rise in cancer rates. Colon cancer may be caused by the presence of pollutants in food, according to Thabet.

“Many services necessary for cancer patients are lacking” in Gaza’s health system, Thabet told The Electronic Intifada. “Surgical facilities are one of them.”

More than 15 percent of all cancer patients requiring surgery are recommended to travel outside Gaza, according to Thabet. Referrals are made to hospitals in Israel, the occupied West Bank, Egypt and, in some cases, to Jordan and Turkey.

Israel frequently obstructs efforts to ensure that cancer patients receive the treatment they require. In some urgent cases, Israel has blocked patients from traveling for periods of three or four months, Thabet added.

Ahmad al-Tannani is ambitious, too. He wants to be a football star.“When I am better, I’ll play football and train hard,” the 8-year-old said.Ahmad, a resident of al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, has lymphoma.

Having undergone an operation, he now requires a form of radiation treatment which is not available in Gaza. He could be treated in an Israeli hospital but has not yet been allowed to travel by the Israeli authorities.

Blackmail

Recently published data indicate that Israel has tightened its restrictions on travel from Gaza.

Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, has reported that there was a 44 percent drop in the number of people who exited Gaza, via the Erez military checkpoint, in January 2017, when compared to the same month last year. Erez separates Gaza from Israel.

Medical patients and people accompanying them were among the categories of travelers affected by the decrease, according to Gisha.

The World Health Organization has also reported[PDF] that Israel is allowing fewer Palestinians to travel for medical treatment.

In January last year, Israel approved 78 percent of all requests to travel for treatment made on behalf of people in Gaza. By December, that proportion had fallen[PDF] to less than 42 percent.

That was the lowest rate of approvals recorded since April 2009.

More than 1,400 patients were delayed from reaching healthcare appointments in December last year. According to the World Health Organization, that was the highest number of such delays ever recorded.

Among those affected were 323 children.

Maram Aqil is an 11-year-with lung cancer. She has been receiving chemotherapy in an Israeli hospital. Her parents hope that they are not hampered from traveling through Erez.

“Delaying the next dose of chemotherapy will kill Maram,” said her mother Najah. “That’s what the doctor told us.”

A resident of Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, Maram is an only child. “When Maram arrived, we thought we owned the whole universe,” Najah said. “But I think cancer will take away the delight we felt.”

One major obstacle encountered by patients with serious conditions and people accompanying them is that they have subjected them to interrogations to Israeli troops at Erez. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has stated[PDF] “Israel is unethically and immorally exploiting the medical needs of Palestinian patients, making their transit for medical treatment conditional on [Israeli intelligence] questioning, in order to squeeze them for intel.”

In January this year, Nidal Elian brought his son, Muhammad, to the Erez crossing. Aged 6, Muhammad has lung cancer and requires urgent treatment.The troops staffing the checkpoint tried to blackmail Nidal. They told him that they would allow him through Erez if he became an informer to the Israeli military. Nidal refused.

“I know that this refusal will cost me the life of my child,” said Nidal. “They will never allow me to pass now and they will not let my child complete his treatment. But I cannot sell my country to my enemy.”

Deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau Ismail Haneyya has said that the 2008 Gaza war has marked an important milestone in the Palestinian people’s struggle for the liberation of Palestine.

In a speech delivered on the eighth anniversary of the 2008 war, Haneyya stated that the Israeli occupation state had failed to achieve its goals during its military aggression against the Gaza people, who won the war with their steadfastness and resistance.

The Hamas official also said that one of Israel’s goals during that war was to dissuade the population from supporting their resistance and turn them against it through bombing their homes and massacring them, but all its plans went awry.

He affirmed that 21 days of Israeli aggression were filled with stories of heroism, patience, sacrifice and popular rallying around the resistance, which joined forced with its people and government to fend off the enemy.

Haneyya reiterated his Movement’s adherence to the path of armed resistance until the liberation of Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque from the occupation.

Eight years have passed since Israel launched its war on the Gaza Strip, known as the battle of the Furqan, and named by Israel “Operation Cast Lead.” the Gaza Strip is still suffering from the consequences of that war, which lasted for 23 days.

Although the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have experienced two major offensives after that, Pillar of Cloud in 2012, which lasted for 8 days, and the Protective Edge in 2014, which lasted for 51 days, the people of the Gaza Strip, especially those directly affected by the 2008 offensive, are still suffering from its consequences.

Israel launched its first offensive on the Gaza Strip on 27 December 2008, leaving behind huge destruction, claiming the lives of 1,436 Palestinians, 410 of them were children, 104 women, and 100 elderly, and injuring 5,400 others, half of them were children.

The war ended 23 days later, on 18 January 2009, leaving a huge destruction in property and infrastructure, as the Israeli war machine destroyed 4,100 houses completely, and 17,000 houses partially, according to statistics published by Palestinian human rights organizations.

Palestinian economist Maher al-Taba’a told the PIC, “The 2008 war has ended and two wars followed, but its consequences and impacts are still present,” noting that those affected by the war are still complaining until the present day.

Taba’a asserted that the agricultural, industrial, and housing sectors along with the infrastructure were damaged the most by the Israeli war machine, noting that Israel destroyed some 1,600 industrial facilities, some of which had not received any compensation yet, and these facilities were very fundamental for Gaza’s economy.”

Statistics and Figures

Palestinian citizens in the Gaza Strip are still suffering from the consequences of the repeated wars against them and 10 years of siege, a report published by UNRWA said, noting that the unemployment rates are worse than what figures suggest.

According to statistics published by the World Bank, Gaza has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, which increased in the third quarter of 2016 to 43.2%. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) has revealed that 17,000 Palestinians were looking for jobs in the third quarter of 2016, yet only 17% of them were employed.

The World Bank’s statistics have shown that 55% of Gaza inhabitants are not economically active.